October 30, 2006

As you have probably seen in many blog posts, the Delphi Survey for 2006 is online. I decided to mention it anyway, as the it is very important that each and every Delphi user fills the survey. However, don't rush to it: The survey takes a lot of time. Allow a good half-an-hour for it, if not more.

By the way, I find the survey more "open-ended" than past ones... and all the main issues (CF, Kylix, Unicode, .NET 2.0, Vista, 64-bit, language extensions...) are in there. So, again, it is worth taking the survey, so that Borland can figure out what is needed only by some very vocal developers and what is useful for most of them...

4 Comments

Delphi Survey 2006

"so that Borland can figure out what is needed only
by some very vocal developers and what is useful for
most of them"
This is very unfair. If it had been for what
was "useful for most of them", Delphi would have
been a VB clone - no OOP, pcode, runtime and OCX
hell, no way to write its own components. Simpler to
use, and far less powerful.
Delphi was different because it was more powerful
than *most* developers ever take advantage of.
In turn, this power had a positive feedback. Those
happily putting controls on a form and gluing them
together with some events were able to exploit the
more powerful controls developed by those who were
able to go beyond what was "useful for most of them".
Just follow the mean, and all you get is a mediocre
product.

Comment by Kent Morwath on October 30, 16:17

Delphi Survey 2006

Kent,
I fully agree with what you say, but this is not what
I meant, and I guess you should know... For sure,
Delphi does and should do much more than the average
developer needs.
But comments like "90% Delphi developers don't care
about .NET", "CF is useless", "we all need Kylix" make
more sense if they come from a broad survey than if
you poll requests in read the non-tech newsgroup.

Delphi Survey 2006

Marco, I apologize for misunderstanding your words.
I am aware that each of us uses a different set of
Delphi features, and each Delphi developer would
like to have her own feature set improved.
Even if we don't develop web sites, I would never
ask to drop web support from Delphi - I understand
it is very important for others.
But when I hear people dismissing other advanced
features just because they don't use them, and many
don't use them just because of their own vertical
market, well, I get a bit upset.
For example localization/unicode may not be an issue
for people working for the US market only, but could
be a big issue for people in Europe and those
working for Eastern Europe, Far East and the like. A
huge market is opening in those countries, and the
approach "we don't need it right now" could mean to
lose a big chance.
I believe the big issue with such a survey is to
weigh results properly. I don't know how they could
match responses to "real users" - as I wrote in
Nick's blog, I'd like the survey to be tied to a BDN
account and product licenses.
Every developer's need is important, but has the
hobbyist working in his basement the same needs of a
company selling critical software to a big
enterprise? Has he the same insight into technology
and market challenges?
DevCo. should deliver not only what "most user want"
(free beer, perhaps?), they should give them what
they will need surely in the near future even if
they are not able to understand it now. In the good
old days Borland had a "vision", and .NET itself
showed that vision was correct. If they lose it, and
give developers the tools to develop yesterday apps
only, well, they have lost.

Comment by Kent Morwath on October 30, 18:16

Delphi Survey 2006

This kind of activity reminds of the history. After
the C++Builder Community posted their Open Letter,
Borland held a similar survey on C++. Now Simon
conducted an Open Letter on Delphi, so Borland/DevCo
responded again. Yes, it is a good action. I wish
everyone using Delphi/Turbos/Kylix and C++Builder
participate in this survey in order to give DTG
correct data on their users. And personally I really
wish Unicode and Win64 support would be soon
available.